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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Behold - the orphan

A couple people have asked for pictures of the offending Bento Box pieces I've made so far, and I was sure I had posted some when I first started it, but my lazy, cursory glance at my past posts didn't turn up anything. I laid out what I had done thus far, and I know that the blocks would be broken up in a finished quilt and not placed together like this, but it looks even worse trying to do that now with so few blocks and so few colors.

And these are the fabrics I have not yet cut or pieced:

So, red, black, green, and white. Though I have an assortment of fabrics, those are the main colors the sushi prints come in. Do I need more colors? More solids or less busy prints? And for those of you who have done this pattern, how many different fabrics did you ultimately use?

The blocks on the left are great! Nice contrast between colours and motifs .. Now the ones on the right .. The top right block is lost – there’s not enough contrast between the colours; the bottom right – I’m not sure why, but that doesn’t seem to work well either ..

Personally, I would try matching up more contrasting colours, remember when you are using ‘smaller’ cuts, your larger motifs will get lost or turn into a blob of colour .. Not sure about the bottom sushi ones in this as I’m not sure of the motif size .. But if they are wider / longer than your cuts, I would put the sushi ones away for another project, you will not be happy with it ..

The cream, red and black – PERFECT! That green that’s in the top right one, would likely work very well with the red and definitely with the black .. If you have any more of the darker fabric from the bottom left you could use that with the top right green .. Least I think it’s green ..

More blenders, smaller motif prints with less action maybe, but the larger motifs – use those for the borders!! Make a nice wide border

I would hate to see you give up on this ..

I hope you find this helpful .. Coo that you are another mac user btw :D

Your comments are quite helpful. I'm thinking that the sushi theme just won't work the way I want for this pattern. Also, the color palette is limited. I'd like to attack this pattern again but maybe with more abstract prints.

you can still make the sushi theme work, but you'll need more blenders is all .. a lot of these would work very well .. but the larger motif prints would have to be delegated to borders or another project ...

I think that the fun of Bento Box quilts is that they rarely look right until you get all the blocks done -- you're convinced it's the ugliest quilt ever, and then all of a sudden everything seems to fall into place, and it works.

It helps, though, if you mix them up. Putting low-contrast pieces with higher contrast can make them pop a little more.